


Necessary

by renascent (unbeldi)



Category: Starship Promise (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbeldi/pseuds/renascent
Summary: There are many things Antares is, but there are two things he isn’t. He isn’t evil, and he isn’t ignorant.





	Necessary

There are many things Antares is, but there are two things he isn’t. He isn’t evil, and he isn’t ignorant. Being neither, he sometimes wonders how he ever secured a position as captain of an Imperial ship.

His fish swim around in the glass arches and tanks all around him. He can’t sleep. Again. Work this time, he thinks. Concerns about work. The device. The girl. The space station he invaded to get to her. He closes his eyes and sees the tally of credits for repair: a million and a half, maybe two, by his count. Minimal lives lost. He’d been careful there. He made sure his men were careful too. And if his hand had been forced, the damage could have been doubled, easily. So that was a victory, of a sort.

Still. It will be a costly repair. All for the theatrical edge of his gambit. He wonders if the Union will be generous enough to foot any part of the bill. From what he knows of them, probably not. But he has other concerns, right now. Like the device. And the girl -- whose colony he invaded.

He isn’t evil. He does what’s necessary, and not a fraction more. No one has learned better than he that nothing in this life comes without cost. A million and a half credits and minimal lives lost are nothing compared to what he stands against. Ten times that would be nothing. He could have taken the girl by force, bombed the station, razed the planet and looted its resources, and it would have been a blip on the radar. But he didn’t. He didn’t do it because it wasn’t necessary, so he isn’t evil.

It’s not for his own sake he reassures himself. He isn’t weak. He’s practical, and realistic. Surrounded by so much evil on both sides of the galaxy, his morals are forever at risk of slipping. Sadism is as much a danger as softness, and if he lets his vision become clouded, all will be lost. Credits and colonies. Officers and friends. Brothers, and blips, and bops. So, as taxing as it is, he must always keep that tally in his mind, of the damage he does and the lives he takes. He must make sure it’s not a step further than what’s necessary.

Still, it would be nice if he could sleep. Medical could whip up a sleep aid for him, no doubt, but what would his crew think, seeing their captain medicating himself just to rest? He’s supposed to be their best example. Their ideal. Not a fidgety, restless man who can’t shut his eyes for more than a few minutes in his own bed, so preoccupied with nascent nightmares that he can’t sleep at all.

She’d notice. She’d notice, without a doubt, and she’d make a fuss in the way she always does. She’d pretend she wasn’t worried, and then she’d make a clumsy hint about it, and he could tell her in painstaking detail how his mind lingers on Olympus 7, on the four men he gutted in her defense, on how Admiral Mirra’s body snapped in the force of the black hole. Or he could do what he always does. Shut down, walk away, and keep her at a distance, where he can keep her safe.

Where she can’t see who he is behind the mask.

Neurotic. Arrogant. Hypocritical. Weak.

But not evil, and not ignorant. The day he becomes either, he’ll ask her to kill him, and she’ll find a way to take his place. Probably without having to resort to any of what he’s done. Probably without a moment’s sleep lost.

All this thinking he does, and somehow she’s always a step ahead of him, looking back and wondering why no one’s caught up to her yet.

He can’t help but smile at that, just a little.

He can’t make her happy, and momentary lapses in judgment aside, it’s important he never lead her to believe he can. All she’d need do is glimpse him as he is now, pacing in front of his fish tank, eyes red and aching with a fatigue he can’t relieve, and she’d lose that desire she feels for Captain Fairchild. But then she’d wander, and the galaxy is a dangerous enough place without a talent like hers. Brilliant as she is, he thinks with amusement, she’s proven rather terrible at keeping herself safe.

So he’ll do it for her. By whatever means necessary. Because, his mind tells him, there may come a day when she’ll need to keep the galaxy safe from him.


End file.
